December 28, 2011

The Washington Post has an article on a Pew Hispanic Center poll that gives the usual Rolodex Spin garnered from talking to self-proclaimed Hispanic Leaders about What Hispanics Want (More Hispanics!):

President Obama holds a wide lead among Hispanic voters when matched against potential Republican challengers, even as widespread opposition to his administration’s stepped-up deportation policies act as a drag on his approval ratings among these voters, according to a new poll.

Surprisingly, Julia Preston of the New York Times' article on the same poll comes out and says something I've been saying since 2002: When you ask Hispanic likely voters which issues are their priorities, Immigration generally comes in down around The Environment. The NYT explains

The Pew Hispanic poll offers some clues to why Mr. Obama’s immigration policy, which has been loudly criticized by many Latino organizations, has not done more to hurt his standing with Latino voters.

Among registered Latino voters, immigration is not a primary concern. For Latino voters, immigration is sixth in importance, the poll found.

Their top three issues are jobs, education and health care, the same issues identified as most important by Latino voters before the midterm elections in 2010 and the presidential vote in 2008, Pew pollsters found. On these issues, Latinos appear to trust Democrats more.

For years, a small number of unimportant, uncharismatic, uninfluential Latino "leaders" have been -- mostly by promptly returning phone calls from East Coast reporters -- conniving with the national media to whip up Hispanic racial fury. But, not many Hispanics read the Washington Post, apparently, so this seemingly dangerous campaign has had relatively little real world impact. In the world of campaign strategy talk, however, it has become mostly unchallenged wisdom.

11 comments:

RKU
said...

For years, a small number of unimportant, uncharismatic, uninfluential Latino "leaders" have been -- mostly by promptly returning phone calls from East Coast reporters -- conniving with the national media to whip up Hispanic racial fury. But, not many Hispanics read the Washington Post, apparently, so this seemingly dangerous campaign has had relatively little real world impact.

I heartily concur. The derivative question "Why do Hispanics trust Democrats more on jobs?" comes closer to the effect that Latino figureheads and conventional wisdom has on the Latino vote. Established Hispanics tend to be more free-market. Newer arrivals are more suspicious, and carry a good deal of the "government should fix this" mentality they grew up with. The negatives that Northeast elites pin on Republicans - that they are heartless capitalists (would that it were so)- resonate with Hispanics, especially the newer ones, more than they do with other American subgroups.

What's more, Latinos vote at less than half the rate that whites do, partly because a lot of them are illegal, a lot of them are too young to vote, and a lot of them are too politically apathetic to vote.

Most places where lots of Latinos do vote are pretty much locks for Democrats anyway, such as California. Florida though is a swing state with a big latino vote.

Latinos vote based on race. The Democratic party is seen as the party of La Raza. They vote Democrat even if it hurts them.

For example, a Democrat governor in California will appoint liberal judges that take water away from the Central Valley and hand it to bugs or rats or fish, in preference to people. Since Latinos are massively employed in agriculture jobs in the Central Valley, this hurts them a lot. But they don't care. They vote Democrat anyway, and they're not going to stop. If you want to have a country, the most important thing is to hold the borders. 2nd most important thing is to kick out any home-grown destroyers. These are the lessons I've learned by living in the USA.

Yes, but the real effect of the Latin presence is indirect. Minors, legal immigrants and illegal aliens don't vote, but they end up on the Census, and thus further bloat the already bloated number of Democratic House districts.

Obviously, the NYT "gets it" becaues they are talking about Obama's policies here.

Otherwise, they would have to report that Hispanics are up in arms about Obama's heartless policies that are ripping apart families and consigning helpless minorities to a dismal life in the countries from which they came.

The NYT can't publish that sort of story. Now, if this were a Republican administration ....

Well, this is truth hispanics have in both Texas and California usually voted for Democratics over Republicans since the 1950's as a group. Now Republicans who love Texas should beware. Harris county where Houston is about 24 percent foreign born and not all hispanic. Rick Perry cheap labor conserativsim leads to this.

Anon 7:04. Read more closely - I am not necessarily disagreeing with you. Established Hispanics are still more "big government" than caucasians, but less so than new Hispanics.

As to the 2:1, 3:1 ratios, I agree. I think that is what I said. Hispanics do vote more Democratic, but not because of what we think of as American Hispanic issues, but because of subtler, Latin-American-attitudes-toward-government issues.

There is a parallel with East Germans (and other Eastern Europeans), who reunited with Europe claiming that they wanted out of communism and were the biggest free-marketers you ever saw, but revealed pretty quickly that they still reflexively expected government to fix their lives.

Also, Norh Dakota which for decades many people didn't want to because its cold is now attracting a lot of blue collar whites. There are some places where in North Dakota where you are paid 15 an hour for a low paying job where in Texas you would get abut 8 an hour because of hispanic immirgants. Some people are waking up.

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